Macy, fired up by a flash of righteous anger, told the old prig that she wasn’t about to be lectured by a member of the administration that had allowed Brazilian and European ships to orbit Mimas unhindered and unchallenged before the Quiet War. ‘You want to talk about selfishness, I can’t think of a better example.’
She would have said more, but Loc Ifrahim smoothly intervened, telling the mayor that Miz Minnot was tired and not quite herself.
It was true. She was tired. So tired that she didn’t even mind Loc Ifrahim’s presumption. She wanted to go back to the pod and see if Newt and the twins had sent another message. She wanted to sleep. She raised up on tiptoe, looking around for Gita Lo Jindal, and saw a wedge of senior diplomats and military officers moving across the far side of the big space, led by Tommy Tabagee and the white man-shape of an avatar.
The face floating in the screen set in the front of the avatar’s head was the face of Euclides Peixoto.
‘This will be interesting,’ Loc Ifrahim said to Macy.
‘He didn’t dare come in person.’
‘Whatever else he is, Euclides is not a coward. He is up to something. ’
‘You should know.’
‘Because I worked for him, once upon a time? Well, I don’t work for him now, and I have every reason to mistrust him.’
Macy felt a pang of guilt for having touched on the raw wound of Loc’s loss. She started to apologise, but he put his hand on her arm and told her it didn’t matter.
‘I still shouldn’t—’
‘Hush. Let’s hear what the great scion has to say.’
The avatar and Tommy Tabagee took up a position in the middle of the terrace. A little drone floated down in front of Tommy Tabagee’s face, acting as a microphone. He said that he had the pleasure of introducing a man who needed no introduction to this distinguished company, so he would simply stand aside and let Mr Peixoto make his announcement.
A hush spread as the avatar turned to study the people circled around, the white plastic of its man-shaped shell throwing off oily glints from the lights floating above the crowd. It paused when it faced Macy Minnot and Loc Ifrahim. Euclides Peixoto’s face was expressionless, his gaze stony, moving past them as the avatar completed its circle. Drones aimed avid camera-eyes at it, the whir of their fans for a moment the only sound.
‘I will not take much of your time,’ Euclides Peixoto said. ‘I will tell you straight away that I have not come to join your enterprise. You’ve wasted too much time in debate. You’re all infected with the pernicious virus of democracy. The idea of fairness. The idea that everyone deserves an opinion about everything, and everyone’s opinion is worth the same as everyone else’s. That kind of stupidity was wiped out years ago in Greater Brazil. Its hosts were killed by the Overturn, and it was unable to find a foothold in those who survived. For only the strong survive. Because they are able to withstand everything the universe can throw at them. Because they have proved themselves strong by defeating the weak, not by treating them as equals.
‘That’s what you ladies and gentlemen, gathered here in your pomp, have forgotten. Life isn’t about cooperation. It’s about struggle. The struggle of the strong to survive. And that’s why everything will be lost if you have your way. You have already wasted time on talk when every second the enemy grows closer, and every second he grows closer he gets faster, too. He isn’t slowing down for debate and votes. He knows what he has to do and he is by God and Gaia doing it.
‘Well, I also know what has to be done and that’s why I came here to say farewell. I’m ready to go out and face down the enemy on your behalf. Oh, don’t thank me now. I neither need nor want your praise. I will defeat the enemy, and I will go on to Jupiter, and meet with General Nabuco and decide with him what must be done to restore the strength and honour of our families. And then I will return here. But not to be thanked. The strong don’t need the gratitude of the weak, as you will find out, by and by.
‘One more thing before I go,’ Euclides Peixoto said. The avatar stepped sideways to a buffet table, raised its left arm and smashed it against the edge, shattering it at the elbow. ‘A little matter of a bad deed that has so far has gone unpunished. A gift that turned out to be fake. Yes, Mr Ifrahim, I see you know just what I mean.’
And the avatar put down its head and charged at Loc Ifrahim in a blur of bright motion and with the jagged stump of its truncated arm stabbed him in the throat and clung to him as he fell, stabbing him over and over in the throat and face and chest, blood spraying and spattering its white shell. Macy caught at its bloody, broken arm and tried to pull it off, but it shrugged her away. She flew backwards, landed smack on her can, and bounced back to her feet, anger and fright singing in her head. A man was shouting, asking someone to shoot the fucking thing, but no one was armed. An Air Defence officer snatched silverware from a buffet table and stabbed at the ball joint of the avatar’s neck; Macy grabbed a tray carried by a floating drone and hammered at the avatar’s head until the screen cracked and went dark and the avatar shut down, whether because it had been mortally damaged or because Euclides Peixoto had cut the connection she would never know.
She helped the officer haul the avatar’s limp and surprisingly light shell off Loc Ifrahim’s body. He lay sprawled in a widening pool of his own blood. His eyes were turned up, he wasn’t breathing, and Macy couldn’t find a pulse in his wrist. She prised his lips apart and placed her mouth over his, tasting his blood, breathing her breath into him, pumping his chest with locked hands, one, two, three, breathing into his mouth again. She was still working on him when a pair of meditechs arrived, but there was nothing they could do then or later to revive him.
10
- For once in his life the poor guy was trying to do good, Macy wrote. But some silly little trick he’d played on Euclides Peixoto came back at him, and it killed him. I disliked him from the first time we met, but I truly feel sorry that he’s dead. I think, at the end, he really had reformed. He really wanted to help out. There was an element of ego in it, he wanted to be in on what he called the hinge point of history so that he could win some kind of power or influence. But still. I’m sorry he’s dead. And I never thought I’d say that.
- Meanwhile, Euclides Peixoto is chasing after his own version of glory. He’s heading towards the edge of the system at the head of a small fleet. Ready to confront the Ghosts. We don’t know what his battle plan is, but he’s taken a large chunk of the TPA’s assets. All the Brazilian ships, of course, plus the European singleships operating out of the Flower of the Forest. So he has two ships of the line and two wings of singleships, also a little fleet of converted Outer ships. And he has a small arsenal of hydrogen bombs too.
- If he does defeat the Ghosts, and if he wasn’t lying - and we still aren’t sure what was true and what was flat-out boasting or fantasy in that little speech I told you about in the last squirt - he’s going to make an alliance with the administration at Jupiter. The general in charge of the occupation force there is an old-school guy who has refused to acknowledge the new government of Greater Brazil. So even if things go well for us here, we’ll still have to work out what to do about that.
Macy wrote on, sitting cross-legged on the bed in her pod, lights dialled down to a twilight glow. It was two in the morning, local time. She was dog-tired, sapped by grief and the drag of Iapetus’s gravity and the grainy residue of spent adrenalin. After the murder of Loc Ifrahim, there had been a long session with the TPA security council and delegates from the free cities. Macy had been asked to attend, the sole representative of the Free Outers. Sitting near the back, her hair drying from the shower she’d taken to scrub off Loc Ifrahim’s blood, she’d listened with increasing impatience to arguments that flowed back and forth with no sign that any kind of agreement would ever be reached. Everyone seemed to be treading old ground and defending positions they’d taken some time ago, showing far too much self-interest and far too little unity or trust. Macy was amazed that no one mentioned the most obvious way of cutting through all the posturing, the single act that would bring the Outers around to the TPA’s side. When the meeting was temporarily suspended around midnight, breaking up into little cliques with nothing substantial decided, she went up to Tommy Tabagee, asked him for a few moments of his time, and laid out her idea.
He listened carefully, said, ‘It is one of the first things we must deal with after this is over—’
‘Not later,’ Macy said. ‘Now. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. This isn’t just about proving to the Outers that you want to reach some kind of reconciliation with them. Although that’s important, no question. But what’s equally important is that there must be all kinds of talented people locked away in that place. About the only thing people here agree on is that we need more resources. Well, aren’t they a resource? We’re short of pilots. Let them fly some of those ships. Maybe they know where ships and caches of weapons were hidden before the Quiet War kicked off. And maybe, just maybe, they can help you to reach out to the Ghosts and stop this developing into a full-scale war.’
They kicked it back and forth. Tommy Tabagee called over the Brazilian ambassador, Paulinho Fontaine, who listened to Macy and then said that while she supported the new government of Greater Brazil and its pledge to free the cities and settlements of Outer system, there had to be an orderly transition and that was not possible in the present crisis.
‘The most important thing I learned, living out here,’ Macy said, ‘is that when it comes to solving problems the Outers have everyone else beat hollow. They’re smart, and they know how to organise and cooperate to get things done. How do you think they survived out here for so long? You don’t need detailed plans for handing over power because they can work up solutions to snags and complications on the spot. But you do need to get them on your side right now, and show them that Euclides Peixoto’s authority has expired. Let him go after the Ghosts if he wants to, and let the Outers help you take care of business here.’
Now, two in the morning, she told Newt what had been decided, sent the message, switched off the slate and the pod’s lights, and lay down and tried to sleep. She had a long day ahead of her. She had to liberate Paris.
The next day, Macy, Tommy Tabagee, the Brazilian ambassador and the neuter, Raphael, were on Dione, in a crowded one-room apartment in the so-called New City, the prison tent built by the Brazilians, talking to elected representatives of the Outer prisoners while a drone up in the corner of the ceiling fed the discussion to everyone else.
One of the representatives was Abbie Jones, Newt’s mother. Macy had barely enough time to tell her that she’d become a grandmother by adoption before everyone got down to business. They talked a long time. Three hours, four. At first, the Outers’ representatives split along expected lines: those who believed that it was a trick, that the Ghosts would be their salvation; those who wanted nothing to do with either the Ghosts or the TPA; and the majority, led by Abbie Jones, who knew that this was their best chance of regaining something like their original independence. Finally, Macy sat back and sipped mint tea and massaged her sore throat, dazed and exhausted, while a referendum was organised. The results came in within an hour: a clear majority in favour of evacuating New City and moving back to Paris.
The Brazilian ambassador made a short and gracious speech thanking them for their decision. ‘Before you begin to organise your people,’ she said, ‘I want to ask you for one favour. We will open links to the other cities in the Saturn System. Talk to their people. Tell them what has been agreed here. Let them know that you have agreed to help us in this desperate hour.’
After that, the Outers got to work. Euclides Peixoto’s zero-growth policy meant that there were no pregnant women, babies, or small children to worry about. A significant minority who refused to cooperate with the TPA under any circumstances agreed to stay behind as caretakers, along with medical technicians and patients too ill to be moved. Everyone else packed day bags and put on their pressure suits and assembled in streets and squares close to the airlocks. Monitors in charge of groups of twenty people reported to supervisors who reported in turn to the ad hoc committee, until at last everyone was ready, and the evacuation began. Group by group, people cycled through the airlocks, some climbing into waiting rolligons, the rest moving off in a slow and ceaseless procession that overflowed the roadway and spread across the dusty ice on either side, a river of people moving with common purpose, flowing across the floor of Romulus crater towards Paris.
Macy walked near the front of the long column with Abbie Jones and other people from the Jones-Truex-Bakaleinikoff clan, including Newt’s uncle, Pete Bakaleinikoff, and Junko and Junpei Asai, members of the little telescope gang she had once belonged to. They told her stories about life under the rule of the Brazilians; she told them about the Free Outers.
‘A great thing you did,’ Pete Bakaleinikoff said, ‘surviving out there, fighting off the Brazilians and then the Ghosts. Will you all come home, when this is over?’
‘I don’t know,’ Macy said, and realised that she hadn’t really thought about it. ‘We’ve made a kind of home out there, at Nephele. I suppose some people might want to stay there. And I suppose that others might want to go back to Miranda and revive the habitat we built there - or build a new one, if the Brazilians destroyed it. But we have to get through this first.’
Everything was at hazard, and yet Macy was happy. It was a fine thing to be walking with her old friends at the head of this great army of people, to have helped to free them, to be leading them home. Rolligons moved at walking pace ahead of the column, carrying supplies and those too old or too infirm to walk, and several trikes skittered up and down, videoing people as they bounded along in a low-gravity lope, talking to each other across the common band, joining in songs that rose and fell down the length of the colourful carnival as it moved steadily through the sombre moonscape under the black sky, with the small bright sun low in the west and Saturn’s great globe looming overhead. Macy was unused to walking long distances. Her legs and back soon began to ache, her breath was harsh in the bowl of her helmet and the stiff pressure suit chafed her at knees and hips, but she was determined to finish the march on her feet.